


close your mouth (open up your heart)

by susiecarter



Category: DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: 5 Times, Antagonism, Bad Flirting, Communication Failure, Developing Relationship, Forgiveness, Gen, Guilt, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 10:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17140424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Post-JL, Clark isn't sure what to make of Bruce Wayne, or that he's ever going to be able to figure it out. But maybe all he needs is a little help.Or: five times Clark had conversations with other people about Bruce, plus the time he managed to actually talktoBruce.





	close your mouth (open up your heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> ♥
> 
> (Title from Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation", because how could I resist? :D Also, while this is pre-relationship, Clark's developing some feelings along the way that are acknowledged clearly enough by the end that I figured it was worth tagging the pairing.)

 

 

**(glib bullshit is not a conversation.)**

"The whole bank?" Clark says, just in case he heard that wrong.

And Bruce Wayne smiles at him, easy and friendly, and says, with a shrug, "It's like a reflex with me."

Okay. Sure. Clark teeters for a second, caught between the urge to shake his head or maybe roll his eyes, and a dim sense that he should try to be a little more polite to the guy who brought him back from the dead.

Even if it's the same guy who also did his best to kill him.

He splits the difference and clears his throat, reaching up to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck. "Well, whatever you did—like I said, there's no way this is enough, but I guess it's a start: thank you, Mr. Wayne."

"Bruce, please," Bruce says. "And like I said: don't worry about it."

He's still smiling, and his tone is warm, amiable. But Clark finds himself hesitating anyway, feeling like he can't quite leave it at that. "I guess you'll be heading back to the city? All of you, I mean," he adds, glancing over his shoulder at Diana and Arthur, Victor, Barry, with boxes in their arms.

"Yep," Bruce says, light. "But don't worry. No need to hurry back. The world managed without Superman for a little while; you can take all the time you need to get back on your feet." He claps Clark on the shoulder, and that smile slants just a little sideways on him for a second. "We'll be in touch."

Clark looks at him, and—he should probably check with Mom first, but he doubts she'd say no. Why not? What could it hurt? "You should stay."

Bruce raises his eyebrows.

"Stay here," Clark repeats. "Have dinner with us, at least, even if you have to be back in Gotham by morning. I'm sure Mom would be happy to have you. All of you. If we're going to work together—"

"I don't think so," Bruce says.

It's delivered mildly, placidly, and yet unmistakably a refusal. Bruce makes no attempt to soften it or explain it, or offer any reason for it.

Was he watching Clark that steadily, that flatly, a moment ago?

"Or just lunch," Clark amends carefully. "I know you must be busy, but—"

"We'll be working together, sure," Bruce says, before he can finish. "But that's all, Clark, I promise." He laughs a little, and shakes his head. "I don't expect to end up exchanging birthday presents, or having sleepovers—or staying over at your mother's house for dinner."

Clark blinks at him. "I just thought maybe we should have the chance to get to know—"

"Sorry," Bruce says briskly. "Maybe I can pencil you in some other time, huh?"

He smiles again before he turns away; but now, for the first time, it strikes Clark that there's something sort of—glossy about it, smooth and polished, impersonal. Not quite the smile Bruce Wayne had given Clark Kent at that fundraiser of Luthor's, but a little too close to it for comfort. The flatness of it, the way it fails to reach Bruce's eyes.

And Clark stands there and watches Bruce Wayne walk away, and feels something bitter and resentful claw its way into his chest. Bruce tried to _kill_ him, and he managed to let it go. Now he makes half an effort to reach out, and Bruce turns him down?

He bites his lip, and makes himself stop staring at Bruce's back. Mood like he's in, he might set the man on fire, and that won't help at all.

It's fine. Just because they're working together, that doesn't mean they have to be friends. Just because they're superheroes, just because they fought side-by-side and won; just because they've kind of saved each other, even if they didn't quite want to—

It doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe Bruce Wayne's just as much of a jerk as Clark ever thought he was.

 

 

**one.**

He doesn't exactly mean to ask.

It's just that he can't stop wondering, that's all.

He's gotten plenty of chances to see Bruce again, since Steppenwolf. Bruce had filled them all in on his plans for what was left of Wayne Manor, and of course there was plenty that a team of super-fast, super-strong people could do to help renovate the building that was going to become their headquarters.

But he still can't make up his mind. He goes back and forth about it in his own head, over and over. So Bruce—just didn't think any of it counted for anything? Had set it all aside: the resentment, the fear, the rage, that had driven him to attack Superman in the first place? _I just undid a mistake, that's all._ Was that really how he thought about it? A mistake, made and then unmade. Left in the past where it belonged, and now Clark's just another member of this—this Justice League, and that's all that matters?

It hardly seems possible. The way Bruce had hung on, the grim relentlessness with which they'd circled each other. Clark still remembers how frustrating it had been, feeling like he couldn't turn around without running into this goddamn Batman, dogging his steps, when he already had so many other problems; when the entire rest of his life was already falling apart on him. All he'd ever tried to do was help people—and this guy, this Bruce Wayne, some rich jackass with too much time on his hands who liked to indulge in a little vigilantism and get people killed in prison, thought _Clark_ was a problem? Jesus.

But Bruce doesn't show him anything but spotless, impersonal courtesy. He hardly even looks at Clark, and when he does, it's with one of those bland little smiles, an attentive look. His tone is always even, pleasant—not warm, but not chilly or standoffish, either. Tepid.

And Clark might almost be inclined to buy it, except there's a whole lot of words he remembers being tempted to apply to Bruce Wayne, and "tepid" hasn't ever been one of them before.

So when he ends up on the manor grounds one day with Victor, waiting for some marble countertops or something to be delivered, he finds himself just sort of blurting it out: "What do you think of Bruce?"

Victor shoots him a sideways glance, lone eyebrow starting to rise. "What do I think of Bruce," he repeats thoughtfully. "What do _you_ think of Bruce?"

Clark makes a gesture that he hopes conveys the full extent of his helpless bewilderment. "I don't know," he says. "I don't—I don't even know where to start." He shakes his head. "That's kind of why I'm looking for a second opinion. You—he found you, right? Asked you to join this team?"

"Him? No," Victor says. "Diana was the one who talked me into it. Bruce was—" He pauses, and after a second the corner of his mouth quirks up. "Bruce almost talked me out of it again, to be honest. He was angry, driven—obsessed, maybe." And Victor had been looking away, across the grounds; but all at once his gaze flicks back to Clark, one dark steady eye and one red blaze of light. "He wanted to bring you back. Wouldn't quit, wouldn't back down. He'd have argued all of us to a standstill over it, even Diana. And then probably have gone off and tried to do it himself, if we hadn't agreed to help him."

Clark wants to laugh, to agree—what little he does know of Bruce fits into that picture as neatly as a puzzle piece. Except he doesn't want to laugh at all. Something about it makes his breath hitch a little in his throat, instead; imagining Bruce, standoffish polished immovable Bruce, that desperate. That desperate, over Clark.

"Yeah," he hears himself say. "Yeah, that sounds about right. So he's—he's not a water-under-the-bridge kind of guy, you'd say."

"Didn't strike me as having much practice letting things go, no," Victor agrees, very dry.

"And I don't suppose you'd describe him as—'tepid'."

Victor angles a disbelieving little glance at Clark, and tilts his head. "The Antarctic ice shelf," he says at last, "or the fires of Mordor, depending on which way you're coming at him. But I can't say I've ever looked at Bruce and seen a whole lot of in-between."

Clark sighs, and rubs one thumb along the bridge of his nose.

It hadn't made much sense to him that Bruce had just come to terms with him; that everything about Superman's existence that had bothered Bruce just—didn't, anymore. Even if Bruce had been able to set it aside temporarily to deal with Doomsday, that didn't mean he was ready to forget about it.

But it isn't any less confusing, to think Bruce had been ready to come to blows with _Diana_ over Clark, had dug him out of his grave and brought him back from the dead, just to smile at him like he was a stranger and ignore him the rest of the time.

Antarctica, yeah; and then the hundred-and-eighty-degree swing to fighting at Clark's shoulder. And after that, how could anybody settle for in between?

"Yeah," he murmurs aloud. "That's kind of what I thought."

 

 

**(bad come-ons are not a conversation.)**

Clark had turned his options over, and decided that maybe what he needed was a new angle. He'd let Bruce set the terms of their interactions as Batman and Superman, and now with the Justice League. But Bruce Wayne hadn't run into Clark Kent since Clark Kent had returned from that sudden "sabbatical".

He figured he'd have a chance to see another side of Bruce. Maybe talk to Bruce in a setting where Bruce didn't feel like he needed to be professional, like he needed to hold Clark at a politely collegial distance.

He hadn't expected—this.

"Well, well, well," Bruce murmurs, leaning in way too close. Way, way, way too close.

Clark clears his throat, and tugs a little on the knot of his tie to straighten it; it was like the way Bruce had looked at him a second ago, that dark raking glance from head to toe and appreciatively back up again, had somehow managed to make it start spontaneously untying itself. "Uh, Mr. Wayne—"

"What's a nice man like you doing at a party like this?"

Bruce practically breathes the words right into Clark's ear, and Clark's leaning away as far as he can manage without tipping over the table Bruce has cornered him against, but it still doesn't feel far enough.

"Looking for you, Mr. Wayne," Clark manages. "I just, uh, I was hoping I could talk to you for a minute. Get a statement about—"

"Oh, I'm sure I could come up with a lot of statements for you, Mr. Kent," Bruce sort of—sort of _purrs_ , deep and rumbling, in a profoundly alarming way. "In fact, I imagine it would be a pleasure to give you _statements_ all night long—"

" _Bruce_ ," Clark hisses, horrified, ears burning.

But when Bruce eases back, it's just to give him a smug, gleaming smile; except behind Bruce's lazily half-lowered lashes, his eyes are hard. "What were you expecting, Clark?" he murmurs. "What did you really come here for?"

 _You_ , Clark can't say. _Just you, dammit. Why won't you let me—why won't you—_

He stares at Bruce, wordless, red-faced and embarrassed, and Bruce offers him a pointed salute with the flute of champagne in one hand and then turns and walks away.

 

 

**two.**

He's annoyed, he can admit that.

He already had been, and then that party was—he didn't know exactly what he'd wanted or expected, but it definitely hadn't been _that_.

The idea of trying to corner Bruce about it, though, is unfathomable. Making a fuss about it to Bruce's blandly pleasant face, telling Bruce he felt upset or jerked around—it's impossible. Impossible.

So he stews in it, marinates in his own simmering irritation; tries to put it behind him and forget about it, but can't.

The Hall is operating, by now. Hall of Justice—that's what they're calling it. As if Bruce hadn't already been confusing enough, sometimes Clark walks through the doors and is still kind of staggered by the whole thing. The generosity of it, practically rebuilding the entire place; all the equipment, the lounge, the meeting room, and suites set up for each of them besides. Clark can't even begin to estimate how much it must have cost. And—

And Bruce had done it for them. No two ways about it. If he'd just wanted the place fixed up, he could have done it years ago. But he hadn't.

Of course he treated it like it was nothing. He'd ignored them or waved them off when they tried to thank him for it; he wouldn't talk about it.

And that's annoying, too.

It's not that Clark tracks down Arthur or anything. He's just sitting in the lounge one afternoon when Clark is busy with that stewing thing, and somehow it comes out.

"Does Bruce frustrate you?"

Arthur twists his head just far enough to regard Clark with that pale steady stare of his, and shrugs one shoulder. "Sure," he says mildly. "Dude's an asshole."

Clark blows out a breath. Nice to hear it from somebody else, at least. "You don't seem too worked up about it," he mutters.

Arthur considers this for a moment, and then shrugs again. "Guess it's growing on me," he agrees. "He's committed to it. Goes all-out. I can respect that."

"Committed to it," Clark repeats.

"Sure," Arthur says. "He came all the way to fucking Iceland looking for me. Looking for me, sticking his nose places it didn't belong. Shoved him into a wall and he still wouldn't fuck off." He shakes his head a little, almost admiring. "And then he followed me outside anyway and kept asking. He had to know it would piss me off, but he did it anyway. I guess he thought it was just that important."

Clark blinks. It probably should have occurred to him a little sooner, he supposes, that Bruce _knew_ he was irritating Clark. That Bruce knew and was doing it anyway.

"He annoyed the hell out of me," Arthur's saying, "but hey, it worked." He gestures toward himself with both hands. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yeah," Clark says.

Because it was true. That was Bruce, too. Committing, like Arthur had said, to whatever he thought would work. Whatever he could _make_ work, through brains or will or sheer brute force, whether it was killing Superman or—

Or bringing him back.

Because, after all—Clark's here, isn't he? That's what Bruce wanted. That's what Bruce wanted, and he made it happen.

Because, maybe, he thought it was just that important.

 

 

**(shouting is not a conversation.)**

Clark tries to take a step back, after that. To be patient, when he can. To not get bent out of shape; to not let Bruce bend him out of shape, more like.

He'd be friends with Bruce, if Bruce would let him. Or at least he'd try. But if Bruce still doesn't trust him, or doesn't like him, or—or is still on the lookout for side effects, even, waiting to see whether Clark's actually been possessed by a mother box, or is going to start rotting away like a zombie or something—

It's fine. He doesn't have to like it to handle it.

He didn't know there was anything to prefer it to. But as it turns out, when Bruce finally loses that glossy featureless sheen, it's not in a good way.

It starts out as just a tightness in his jaw. Clark actually hears it first—the gritting of Bruce's teeth, to be precise. It's just a post-mission briefing, and Bruce is running it with his usual expressionless efficiency when Clark offers up—

Well. All right, maybe it's a little bit pointed. He tries to phrase it neutrally. He really does. But the comment he tosses in about keeping everyone apprised of everyone else's movements probably does sound like a jab at the way Bruce had hared off without warning, trying to cut off that one escape route today's villains had tried to take.

And Clark probably shouldn't let it escalate quite as far as it does. It's just—

It's just that it's so _satisfying_ , to finally get a reaction out of Bruce that isn't so perfectly, precisely controlled that all the feeling's smothered out of it. Even if the feeling is anger.

But he can admit that he probably shouldn't have started shouting.

 

 

**three.**

He goes for a run afterward.

He tells himself it's to cool off, to give himself a chance to get in the right mindset to go back and offer Bruce an apology. But it's more that—that it's the only thing he _can_ do, the only thing he wants to do. He probably just smashed any chance he has of really mending fences with Bruce into smithereens, and there's no way he can fix it.

So he runs.

He runs the way Superman can run. Superman—and the Flash.

He doesn't even think about it until he's already reached the Arctic. He isn't even doing anything but going in circles, letting the world blur into blinding white snow and endless sky, clear pale sunlight. And then a crackling streak passes him, and he knows instantly that it must be Barry.

He doesn't slow down right away. Not that he needs to; Barry's the faster of the two of them, at least within Earth's atmosphere. Something to do with the "speed force"—Clark's still subject to friction, but Barry isn't. Or at least that was the gist of what Clark had gotten out of Barry's much, much longer explanation.

Barry laps him once or twice, just letting Clark know he's there. And when Clark finally does skid to a stop, letting his feet plough furrows in the ice just for the hell of it, one more bright white crackle and Barry's next to him.

"So, hey, wow," Barry says, scuffing a foot in the snow. "I didn't really know you got that loud? You're always doing the whole, you know, soft-spoken reporter guy thing. Or, like, Superman's sort of stern, I guess, but he still doesn't yell that much."

Clark grimaces, and rubs at the back of his neck. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry about that. I shouldn't have—I shouldn't have made all of you listen to that."

"Hey, man, even if the briefing had been over, I think we'd still have been listening to that," Barry says. "Like, across state lines, I think people were listening to that."

Clark winces and laughs a little at the same time, and Barry flashes him a grin, beaming, visibly pleased to have lightened the mood.

"Seriously, though," he adds after a second. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Clark says. "Yeah, I'm fine. I was just irritated. I let it build up, and I should have known better. We're grown adults. I just—" He stops and bites his lip, and shakes his head. "I just have so much trouble talking to him, and I don't know why."

"Well, I mean, he's a big weirdo," Barry says. "He lives alone in a glass house over the huge cave full of bats where he keeps his secret high-tech crime-fighting equipment. I mean, not alone-alone, there's Alfred, but yeah. He's not really the easiest guy to, like, relate to? Which I sometimes think is on purpose, because, seriously, glass house? For basically the least transparent dude on the planet, am I right?"

Clark snorts. "You're telling me," he says. "I can see _through_ him, and I still don't understand him."

"Aw, man," Barry says, rueful, laughing. "You get all the best superpower wordplay, seriously."

He blurs briefly in place—warming himself up, Clark assumes, and when you can still feel the cold, it must be handy to be able to just speed up all your molecules a little. And Clark looks at him, his open earnest face, bright and eager and always so sincere, and hears himself say, "What made you agree to be on a team with him, anyway?"

"Me?" Barry says, blinking, as if there's conceivably somebody else around that Clark might be talking to. "Well—I mean, he asked, for one thing. I'm not so great at saying no. Not that I tried, though. I wanted to, I guess. I wanted to be part of something, and anything Batman's part of too is a pretty cool something. And I—" He stops and bites at his mouth, and shrugs a little. "I mean, I got these powers, and don't get me wrong, they're _awesome_ , but I—I don't know, I just didn't feel like I knew what I was doing. I was just sort of running around trying not to f—um, screw up that bad."

"I swear, you know," Clark says levelly.

Barry winces. "I know! I know, I know you do, I just—sometimes I look at you and I'm like, 'jesus, that's Superman, be your best self or perish', and it gets weird. Sorry! Sorry. I bet you could just stand at an intersection in the costume, and everybody would start going the speed limit and like actually slow down for the yellow lights?" He stops and waves a hand. "And that has nothing to do with what we were talking about! I just—he came and asked me. _Me_. Batman came and asked me if I wanted to _be on his team_.

"And I know he's kind of a mess. But so am I, right? And he's a mess who saves people, and he's really good at it when he tries. And I'm just a mess, right now, but maybe I could like level up to being a mess who saves people, too."

"Because he'd help you," and Clark shouldn't have let that come out as skeptical as it did, but it's just—

It's just that's never anything he's really associated with Batman. Yeah, they spent fifteen minutes fighting Steppenwolf together, and everybody's told him how Bruce was the one who assembled them, who brought them all together to form the Justice League. But he'd still been dead; he hadn't seen it happen, and somehow that secondhand knowledge has never quite managed to outweigh lying there pinned under Batman's boot, wrenchingly and viscerally aware that he was about to die and that there was nothing he could do about it.

Except Barry's nodding. "Yeah. I mean, he did. He has. I already told him I didn't know what I was doing, and he told me to save one."

"What?"

"One person," Barry elaborates. "Get in, save one person, get out. Save another. And then keep going until you've saved them all." He pauses, and tilts his head. "I guess that's kind of what he's always been trying to do. He can't, you know, lift up the planet or tear aliens in half or whatever. All he can do is try to save people, when he's got the chance."

"Right," Clark says slowly.

"Plus I needed friends," Barry adds. "Which, probably that one applies to him, too."

Clark snorts, and then rubs at his face. "Sorry, I didn't mean—you're probably right. I'd just think if he needed friends, he'd try a little harder." It's hard to imagine it, Clark thinks. Bruce, lonely? When he's so self-contained all the time, and so goddamn difficult; when every single thing he does seems designed to push people _away_ —

"Well," Barry says, "I guess he's been Batmanning around by himself for a long time?" He shrugs, lopsided and a little awkward. "When you get really used to doing things one way, it can be hard to change. Inertia, you know?"

Clark tips his head back and looks up at that wide blue Arctic sky, and thinks about being alone; about secrets, and habits that are hard to break. "Yeah," he says. "I guess I do."

 

 

**(avoidance is not a conversation.)**

What Barry said makes sense to Clark. He resolves to try to keep it in mind—to remember it the next time Bruce stonewalls him, and to do his best to give both of them a chance to—to break old habits.

But it would be a lot easier if Bruce weren't giving him the silent treatment.

Or not the silent treatment, exactly. It takes almost a week for Clark to even realize what's going on: that Bruce is never alone in the same space as Clark, never addresses him individually. Not even the way he has been, with that relentless and unyielding equanimity. He brings things up to the team, radios them all at once and issues a tactical assessment that's never quite directed toward Clark specifically. He doesn't look at Clark either. Oh, his eyes pass over Clark, he's not—not turning his back to Clark, nothing that pointed or that obvious. But Clark notices anyway.

He notices, and he almost wishes it made him angry. He almost wishes he didn't feel so grimly resigned.

Just one more tactic he's going to have to wait out. He can afford to. Sooner or later, surely, Bruce will stop this, or—or Clark will have a real reason to take Bruce aside, to push the issue.

A real reason, one Bruce will listen to. One that isn't just—because he wants to.

And that lasts right up until the top ten floors of the main Wayne Enterprises tower in Gotham explode.

 

 

 **four.**

Clark hears about it almost as soon as it happens, because he's at the Planet.

It takes an unbearably long four minutes to find Lois and take her aside, but he hardly even has to open his mouth before she's nodding at him, telling him she'll cover for him with Perry and then turning him around and pushing at his shoulders, saying, "Go, go on. Just go."

He goes.

Superman arrives at the scene a little late, depending on who's counting. Wonder Woman and the Flash are already there, after all—though Barry's nearly invisible to the cameras, probably, speeding up the side of the tower and back down in flickers of white light.

Saving one person, Clark thinks, and then another, just like Bruce told him; and then he kind of wants to punch himself in the face.

In the end, Superman's actually the most use as a stabilizing force, structurally speaking. He can hold up what remains of the building's superstructure without pressing down on anything below him that was weakened by the blast, to lessen the risk of further collapse while emergency services are still working.

And it feels—it feels like no time at all before it's over. Everyone is evacuated, the injured have been whisked away; the fires have been put out, and somebody who did a lot more work at a lot more personal risk to their own safety is grasping Clark's hand and saying, "Thank you, Superman. We'll take it from here." And then—

Then there's nothing to do but go back to the Hall and wait.

Diana beats him there, too: when he touches down and walks inside, she's already waiting in the entrance hall. "Bruce was in his office," she says immediately, "but he is still alive," and Clark hadn't even realized how hard he'd been trying not to know, not to look for the answer, until suddenly half the sound in the world comes rushing back in.

Because he hadn't wanted to listen for Bruce's heartbeat, not if he wasn't going to find it.

He stands there and rubs a hand across his face, and makes himself breathe. He—he might not have been breathing, since he left the Planet office. Usually he does, unthinking habit, but suddenly he's not sure. "So he'll be all right," he says.

Diana looks at him gravely. "I don't know," she says. "Alfred is with him. He called, and said it was too early to tell. They'll stabilize him at the hospital, if they can, and then bring him here. Apparently Bruce Wayne is very particular about being treated by his private medical staff."

And for a weird hysterical second, Clark almost wants to laugh. Because yeah, of course he was. That Bruce Wayne. What a prima donna.

Diana reaches out and grips his shoulder, and the warmth of her hand is steadying. "If there is anything we can do," she says quietly, "we'll do it."

"Of course," Clark says. And after all, he thinks, Bruce brought him back from the dead; if he had to, he's starting to believe he'd do the same for Bruce.

Maybe that's why it occurs to him to ask. Thinking of his own death, of the battle—and of Bruce, sure. But Diana had been there, too.

"Why did you help?" he says. "With Doomsday, I mean. He knew you, but he wasn't expecting to see you there any more than I was. Why did you come?"

Diana looks at him and considers it—forehead furrowing, brows drawing down, because of course she'd treat it like as serious a question as any, and not just Clark rambling hysterically. Of course she'd be determined to give him the best answer she could.

"Because I couldn't go," she says at last. "It wouldn't have been right to. I knew that I could help you, and, knowing that, it would have been wrong to turn my back to it and let you face that thing alone. No one should have to be alone, against such overwhelming darkness."

Clark swallows, and closes his eyes.

"Bruce knows that, too," Diana says, more quietly. "That was why he wanted us all together, to face what he saw coming for us. You had the same choice, didn't you? No one made you follow us to Russia, to Steppenwolf. But you helped us."

"Yeah," Clark says. "Yeah, I guess I did."

It's strange to think of it that way. But he's always had a choice, hasn't he? He still does. He can leave the Justice League, if he wants to; he's never had to put up with Bruce's attitude, with his staring or his stupid flat smiles or his bullshit. He could have left whenever he liked, and never had to see Bruce again.

But he hadn't. Because that hasn't ever been what he really wanted.

"Hey!"

Barry's voice overlaps just a little with that telltale Dopplered crackle he gives off, and Clark and Diana both look over at the same time.

"He's stable," Barry says, bright and breathless, urgent. "He's stable, they'll be transferring him to the Hall as soon as they can."

"Okay," Clark makes himself say, and he's glad it's Diana's hand he's got in his grip, because if it were anyone else's, he's pretty sure he'd already have crushed it.

 

 

**(if the other person can't hear you, it's not a conversation.)**

Bruce looks like crap.

That probably ought to be the disconcerting thing. They've cleaned him up; he isn't bleeding openly or anything. But the bruising is extensive, even though all that's showing is his head, his throat, and where he isn't black and blue he's pale, weirdly insubstantial.

But Clark's seen Bruce bleed before. He's _made_ Bruce bleed.

And what's actually unnerving about Bruce like this isn't the visible injuries, the IV, the zillion monitors, the odd shallowness of his heartbeat in Clark's ears.

It's—it's the slackness.

Not the stillness. Bruce crouches in place sometimes as Batman, motionless as a statue; or stands at the head of the briefing room table, glaring at Clark, unmoving. But he's never _slack_ , not like this. He's always tense one way or another, alive with it, filled with the potential to explode into motion the instant he deems it necessary.

It's a medically-induced coma, as Clark understands it. Just to keep him under until the swelling in his brain has a chance to go down.

But he looks at Bruce's closed eyes and slack mouth, his limp hand trailing over the clean white sheet, and has to work not to shudder. He's tuned in to the sound of Bruce's heartbeat so closely that he keeps catching distant half-echoes of other noises that are the same frequency—far-off sonic booms, a dozen different thumping bass beats coming from the city overhead. And everything else, even Diana's and Victor's voices a floor away, sounds thin and unreal, compared to the overwhelming resonant surround-sound of Bruce's heart.

"Hey," Clark says.

Bruce doesn't answer. But then he might not have even if he'd heard it, Clark thinks, and feels the corner of his mouth twitch, a wry little smile trying to fight its way onto his mouth.

"I don't like you very much," Clark tells him. "Sometimes I even think maybe you want it that way. You're stubborn and annoying, and you don't make any sense. I don't understand you, you're—I don't think I've ever understood you.

"So you can't go anywhere. All right? You can't go anywhere until I've figured you out. I just want to figure you out, damn you. And you're not getting away from me until I find out how to make you let me."

He finds himself reaching for Bruce's hand. Which is stupid, because Bruce can't feel it and surely even if he could it wouldn't mean anything to him; but Clark grips it anyway, rubs his thumb across Bruce's knuckles, and is dimly surprised by how good that feels. How reassuring it is, to have that reminder of Bruce's physical solidity, the simple straightforward pressure of Bruce's fingers beneath his own—as if he can keep Bruce here just by refusing to let him go.

"Obviously you can't hear any of this," he adds belatedly, with a careful squeeze. "But I—I guess that just means I'm going to have to tell you again sometime. As many times as it takes, until you hear me."

 

 

**five.**

He doesn't know how long he's been sitting there, and his hearing is still trained on Bruce—so it startles him a little, when the door opens.

"Ah, Mr. Kent. Forgive me, I'll come back—"

"No, no," Clark says quickly, and stands, though he can't quite talk himself into releasing Bruce's stupid reassuring hand. "No, Alfred, it's fine. Come in, please. I was—I was just thinking, that's all. I just needed to think."

And Alfred pauses with one hand still on the doorhandle, and then draws the door carefully shut behind him. "As you say, Mr. Kent," he murmurs; and then his gaze flicks from Clark to Bruce, and he bites down on a sigh. "Oh, look at you, sir. I can't even blame you for it, this time," and he smiles a little, wry and slanting. "Takes half the fun out of it."

Clark can't help but raise an eyebrow. "How often does this happen?"

Alfred is silent for a moment. "Too often," he says quietly, and Clark is about to apologize when he looks up and adds more lightly, "But less often than you might think." He stops, and then takes a step nearer, two, until he can reach out to rest a hand on Clark's shoulder. "Master Wayne does have a way of surviving things, even when the odds are against him."

And Clark has to huff out an unamused little laugh at that. "Sure," he says. "Like a fight with Superman. Or a fight with the thing that killed Superman, for that matter."

Alfred grimaces. "I don't supposed he's apologized for that?"

"Not in so many words," Clark agrees.

"Of course not," Alfred murmurs, under his breath, and then he shakes his head a little and meets Clark's eyes, with a knowing sort of look. "You must understand, Mr. Kent—Master Bruce has always been disinclined to believe in the worth of half-measures. Anything he does must be done to the fullest capacity he possesses.

"When he considered you a threat, he was determined to neutralize that threat, and therefore compromise was impossible. And now that he does not—"

"What?" Clark prompts gently, when the pause has stretched longer than he can stand.

"Now that he does not," Alfred says, "I imagine that he perceives his own error in much the same terms—that if it cannot be redressed or unmade as thoroughly as it was made, it is indelible, absolute."

Clark blinks. "He resurrected me—"

"He cost you months of your life," Alfred says softly. "And a relationship that meant a great deal to you."

Clark shifts his weight and looks away. "Lois and I will be all right," he says, feeling oddly defensive. "Maybe we'll get back there, maybe we won't. That's about us, not him."

"He caused your mother a great deal of pain. Your mother, your friends, everyone who knew you. A sort of pain," Alfred adds, more softly still, "that Master Wayne is at this point exquisitely familiar with himself."

Clark swallows.

Alfred offers him a quiet, knowing sort of smile, and then looks down at Bruce again. "And I'm sure you're also well aware that Master Wayne lies a great deal, during the ordinary course of his days. Words have, through their use and misuse in his hands, become cheap. Apologies are, to his mind, fundamentally meaningless; it is action that has value."

"So," Clark says slowly, "he bought a bank."

"Did he?"

"Yeah," Clark says. "He did."

 _It's like a reflex with me._ Bought a bank, a job, a cover story—a paper trail for Clark Kent, though he'd made a face when Clark tried to thank him for it, waved Clark off and said he had a ten o'clock he needed to make, unless there was anything else. The team, their equipment, the Hall of Justice.

And of course, Clark thinks, a man who chose nighttime pursuit of evildoers as a masked vigilante for a hobby valued action over speech.

He looks up, and finds Alfred watching him instead of Bruce. "But I don't want a bank," he says aloud. "I just want to _talk_ to him."

"A tall order," Alfred murmurs sagely. "But luckily enough, Mr. Kent, if I am any judge then you are more than equal to the challenge."

 

 

**and one.**

Bruce is fine, in the end.

Mostly fine, at least. He doesn't care to remain restricted to bed rest, once he's conscious, though at the absolute least the rest of the League is united in asserting that they can do without Batman until he's fully recovered.

Clark keeps an ear on him, though.

Which is why, the evening Bruce nearly reinjures himself, Clark is there within fifteen seconds—more than quickly enough to press him back into his chair before he can try to stand a second time.

"I think you've proven that's not a good idea," Clark says.

"You shouldn't be here," Bruce snaps.

Clark draws a slow breath, and when Bruce glares up at him, he manages to smile instead of glaring right back. "I just want to help if I can, that's all."

"You were listening," Bruce says, flat.

Which, Clark supposes, is fair. "Yeah, I was. And I'd apologize for it, except I'm not sorry."

"You aren't."

"No," Clark admits. "I was worried about you, Bruce. We all were. I was worried about you, and I'm glad you're all right, but I saw how bad it was. I wanted to keep an eye on you—uh, or an ear, I guess. I wanted to be sure somebody could be there, if you needed it, and I figured it might as well be me."

He's expecting Bruce to keep pushing. To tell him what his non-apology's worth, that if he doesn't leave Bruce will find one way or another to make him.

But instead Bruce looks up at him, eyes narrowing. Clark sees the muscles of his jaw work once, twice, and then, of all things, Bruce says, "Why?"

Clark blinks at him. "What?"

"Why? Why do you keep—" Bruce bites off the word, fist clenching so hard his knuckles go pale, and huffs a sharp frustrated breath through his nose. "I'm not your responsibility, Clark. I'm not your responsibility, I'm not your burden to bear, I'm not your _friend_."

"You could be," Clark says.

Bruce stares at him.

And it's right then, looking down into Bruce's wide and thoroughly baffled gaze, that it first occurs to Clark that maybe he's been frustrating Bruce almost as much as Bruce has been frustrating him—that Bruce has found him just as difficult, just as inexplicable and just as unreasonable.

He laughs.

Bruce doesn't seem to find this enlightening.

"Sorry," Clark says, and then ruins it by laughing again, rubbing a hand over his mouth in a half-hearted attempt to muffle himself. "I just—never mind. Look, Bruce, I don't want to make you my responsibility, all right? If anything, I'd—I'd rather we were each other's. You're not a burden, and I don't mean for you to feel like one. I just don't want you hurt again. Not even by yourself." He stops and swallows, suddenly and unaccountably nervous, rubbing his hands absently against each other. "And I'd like to be your friend, if you'd let me."

It sounds stupid as soon as it comes out of his mouth, simplistic and school-yard of him to say—why hadn't it sounded that way when Bruce said it?

But Bruce doesn't mock him, doesn't sneer at him. " _Let_ you," he says, blankly.

"Well, yeah," Clark says, and then feels even stupider. "I mean—you haven't been making it easy, so far. Or was that honestly not on purpose?"

Bruce is silent, for a long moment. "I suppose," he says, "that I—I felt it would be best."

"Well, I think you're wrong," Clark says baldly.

Bruce glances up at him then, and in the absence of the flat coldness Clark had started to grow used to, it's—his eyes are—

The corner of Bruce's mouth abruptly slants up, and Clark thinks dimly that he'd never really been able to tell before whether Bruce had a sense of humor.

He swallows hard, skin prickling, and oh. Oh.

Maybe there's been more than one reason he hasn't been able to talk himself into leaving Bruce alone. Maybe it isn't just about wanting to understand Bruce; maybe there are—maybe there are other things he wants.

And maybe now he'll finally get a chance to work out whether Bruce could ever want those things, too.

He reaches out and sets a hand over Bruce's fist, still clenched on the arm of the chair. "Let me?" he says, soft.

And Bruce sits there and watches him, and doesn't pull his hand away. "You may regret it, if I do," he murmurs, very low.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that, too," Clark tells him, and smiles.

 

 


End file.
